Today we face a climate of ever increasing misdirection by popular media. This site, along with others, aims to reveal the reality of America and the loss of fact inherent to the over riding theme of our current political and social confusion: Purposeful deception.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

U.S. Obligated To Take Iran Dispute To International Arbitration

Contributed by Sherwood Ross

It may come as a surprise to Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and
Rick Santorum but the U.S.
is obligated under international law to the peaceful resolution of its
grievance against Iran.

Santorum has criticized President Obama’s attempt to negotiate with Iran and,
according to The Christian Science Monitor, “called for increased covert
sabotage, bombings, and even arresting foreign scientists” working in Iran.
Romney has called Iran
“the greatest threat we face” and for pulverizing its nuclear facilities
“through airstrikes and (to) make it very public we are doing just that.”

If the U.S. sought to
prevail by military force, however, it would be in contravention of at least
three historic treaties the U.S.
has signed pledging itself to the peaceful resolution of disputes. As war fever
sweeps Washington and the Republican candidates, save for Rep. Ron Paul, cry
for war, it behooves Iran
to initiate legal action.

In this age of instantaneous communications, the whole world is watching to see
if either nation will seize the diplomatic initiative, to see which truly
prefers conversation to conflict. As members of the United Nations, both Iran
and the U.S. are obligated to go to arbitration, not to come out shooting, a
fact lost on the hawkish GOP politicians who seem unaware the American people
have had a bellyful of war and want to prioritize a domestic agenda.

Both Iran and the U.S.
are signatories of the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact of 1928 which states, “The
High Contracting Parties agree that the settlement or solution of all disputes
or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may
arise among them, shall never be sought except by pacific means.”

To the contrary, “The United States has been illegally threatening war against
Iran going back to the Bush Jr. Administration,” says international law
authority Francis Boyle of the University of Illinois, Champaign, and author of
“Destroying World Order: U.S. Imperialism in the Middle East Before and After
September 11”(Clarity Press).

Boyle reminds, “Article 2 of the United Nations Charter requires the pacific
settlement of the international dispute between the United
States and Iran.” The UN Charter, he adds,
“sets up numerous procedures” for the U.S.-Iranian dispute while prohibiting
“both the threat and use of force by the United
States against Iran.”

Ditto for the Hague Convention of 1899, to which both nations are a party. That
pact set up the Permanent Court of Arbitration(PCA) in The Hague and made it the duty of other
signatories of that treaty to remind the aggrieved parties the Court is there
for them.

The reason given by the U.S.
for threatening Iran is
alleged to be that Iran
is developing a nuclear weapon in secret. This charge is made with a straight
face even as the U.S.
lavishes military aid on its ally Israel. Israel is said to have an arsenal
of 200-300 nuclear bombs it refuses to allow the International Atomic Energy
Agency to inspect.

The spurious U.S. pretext
for war flies in the face of U.S.
aggression against Iran long
before Iran
began building the nuclear facilities it says are needed to expand electrical
output. Past U.S. aggression
had everything to do with Iran’s
oil and nothing else.

It is indisputable that the CIA in 1953 overthrew by force and violence Iran's
democratic government, causing Iranians years of suffering under a savage,
despotic regime. The CIA overthrow was prompted by Great
Britain, peeved when Iran took over management of its
own oil fields after years of being cheated by the British corporation to whom
they were entrusted. That firm today is known as BP.

The U.S. also backed Iraqi
despot Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran and supplied him with
conventional weapons as well as illegal chemical and biological warfare agents
responsible for the horrible killing and maiming of tens of thousands of
Iranian troops. This was, in fact, by any reasoning, an act of war by the U.S. against Iran.

As peace activist David Swanson writes on OpEdNews January 6th: “For the past
decade, the United States has labeled Iran an evil nation, attacked and
destroyed the other non-nuclear nation on the list of evil nations, designated
part of Iran's military a terrorist organization, falsely accused Iran of
crimes including the attacks of 9-11, murdered Iranian scientists, funded
opposition groups in Iran (including some the U.S. also designates as
terrorist), flown drones over Iran, openly and illegally threatened to attack
Iran, and built up military forces all around Iran's borders, while imposing
cruel sanctions on the country.”

This same U.S. that is
threatening to Iran
today has a long history of lying in order to justify its wars of aggression.
It lied to invade Iraq
by charging Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, when he did not. It lied
in 1964 to justify its war in Viet Nam
when it claimed the Vietnamese attacked a U.S.
destroyer in the Gulf
of Tonkin, when they did
not. And much of the U.S.
public believes Washington lied about those responsible
for the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington to justify the start of the war against Afghanistan. Aggressive
nations relish a fight and the U.S.
presently is doing just that in a half dozen countries in the Middle East and Africa.

This history is important because, by contrast, Iran has not started a war in
approximately 300 years. Its defense budget of less than $8 billion a year is a
tiny fraction of the U.S.
warfare budget of nearly $1 trillion annually. (Describing Iran as America’s “gravest threat” reflects
poorly on Romney’s foreign affairs smarts.) In fact, Iran would commit national suicide if it
launched an attack upon the U.S.
or Israel.
The Pentagon’s annual budget is the largest in the world and, in fact,
greater than the next 20 military powers combined.

Yet another measure of Iran’s
peaceful intent and America’s
warlike posture is that Iran
has no military bases outside of its own borders while the U.S. has over 800 bases around the world from Okinawa to Diego Garcia, frequently established against
the will of the local inhabitants. More than 40 U.S.
bases are located in six nations that encircle Iran, from which the Pentagon is
poised to attack.

Betraying America’s
aggressive intent is that none of its military response has been to defend its
own borders from attack. Its troops are always waging war halfway around the
world in Asia and the Middle East, bombing the
other guy’s yard. Given the foregoing facts, which nation does Gov. Romney
conclude poses the greater menace to world peace and security? Iran, of course.

While Iran’s military in
recent days says it will give a good account of itself if attacked, there is
every prospect Iran would
suffer the terrible punishments the U.S.
inflicted on Viet Nam and Iraq, among others,
if war broke out.

An imaginative leadership in Iran
likely would be better off to announce in advance a course of non-violent
resistance to any aggressive move by the U.S.
and/or Israel.
And it needs to immediately present its case to the International Court of
Justice at the PeacePalace in The
Hague.

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